“More attacks on operators. Now incisive actions and cultural revolution” –

From north to south, attacks on healthcare workers do not stop. “For their safety, incisive actions and cultural revolution”, declares in a note Gianluca Giuliano, national secretary of UGL Salute. “Despite the introduction of flagrant arrest, even deferred, for those who are involved in attacks against staff In the health sector the episodes of violence show no sign of decreasing. Within a few hours we recorded the crazy attack in Vallo della Lucania where a nurse and an ambulance driver were savagely hit with a hammer by a person they had helped occurred in Belluno where a nurse was threatened with a knife and then hit by a series of punches thrown by a drug addict who had been denied a dose of methadone. In both terrible episodes the attackers were equipped with objects designed to offend the toll of these umpteenth wicked acts could have been very heavy” we read in the statement.

“If in the first case the aggressor was arrested in compliance with the new rules established by the anti-violence decree, in the second case a criminal complaint was filed – comments the trade unionist – A measure that we believe to be attenuated compared to the violence of the gesture performed and the danger represented from the threat towards the operator with a knife. According to the report presented in March 2024 in Parliament by the National Observatory on the safety of operators, in 2023, 16 thousand episodes of attacks on operators were recorded”.

It doesn’t end here. “In such a dramatic situation, a further attack on professionals, albeit in words, came from Foggia. The General Director of the Riuniti Hospital Giuseppe Pasqualone, commenting on the attack suffered by some health workers by the relatives of a young deceased patient, had talked about: ‘defect in communication between doctors and the family’. Words that are inappropriate to define as inappropriate and which almost seemed to justify the absurd epilogue of the affair which put the safety of the staff on duty at serious risk”, states Giuliano. “The measure is now more than full. Incisive actions are therefore needed. We ask that the activation of video surveillance systems in the structures, provided for in Legislative Decree 137/2024, be accelerated as much as possible considering that videos and photographic images can have evidential value against the attackers. And that, in agreement with the Ministry of the Interior, the fixed public security posts in all hospitals, without exception, must be open 24 hours a day again. To ensure the safety of the operators. there is also a need for a real cultural revolution that is able to offer citizens the exact perception of the social role played in the service of the entire nation” concludes the trade unionist.